Chapter 5: Egalitarian Intentions and Gendered Beliefs: Gender and Fertility Decisions

In a story shared by “The Ethicist” in The New York Times Magazine, a 38-year-old woman who found herself “accidentally pregnant” with her boyfriend’s child wondered, “Can I Keep a Baby My Boyfriend Doesn’t Want?” (Appiah, 2017, p. 1). The philosopher’s response reflected contemporary discourse about fertility decisions that walks a fine line between couple decision-making and a preference for women’s choices. In his response, Kwame Anthony Appiah (2017) walked through the connected issues of contraception and parents’ responsibility to support children financially, emotionally, and otherwise. Appiah (2017) concluded,

As the quote above suggests, Appiah (2017) believed this woman was entitled to make her own choice about the pregnancy, even if her boyfriend did not change his mind. However, the boyfriend’s decision should weigh somewhere in the balance. But just where, and with how much weight? A similar piece published in 2024, “My Son’s Ex-Girlfriend Wants to Keep Her Pregnancy. Is That Unfair to Him?” (Appiah, 2024), along with continually debated reproductive legislation in the United States, provides further evidence that the question of who has the right to refuse to have children remains unresolved. Given the physical and health challenges of pregnancy for women, can they refuse? Without the same physical and health demands, what rights do men have to refuse?